Does anybody already have an UperGrafx UGX-02 ? (memory card compatibility)

[dshadoff]

I've been following the progress on these devices, and based on what I recently saw in Akihabara, plus the system firmware updates posted on twitter, I decided to order one.

If you have one, could you help me understand the memory card compatibility ?

The website indicates (in Japanese) that it supports MMC-compatible cards, but I can't seem to find any MMC cards over 4GB (including MMCPlus).  However, the webiste indicates that they've verified with 64GB cards (which is backed up by the large number of disc images on a card, mentioned/pictured in tweets).

So I'm not sure if some variant of SDCard is also supported...or whether they just have secret sources of large cards.

...Just want to make sure that I get the right kind of card(s).

Dave

[NightWolve]

The only person I know or can think of right now that has one is GameTechUS who was given one to evaluate for potential partnership purposes (The Japanese team was looking for US partners to handle distribution here). Given how expensive it was, it didn't "look good" on that happening...

I dunno if his email is still valid here, but you could try a PM to him (last visit was February), if not, there's a contact page on his website, https://www.game-tech.us/contact/. But yeah, he's your best bet since he evaluated it extensively some time back.

[dshadoff]

Update in case anybody is interested...

I received it, and had a few pleasant surprises.

- a simple DVI-to-HDMI cable (I got from Amazon) was all I needed to enjoy on my existing 4K monitor.  It automatically chose a dot-multiplication mode for 1280x720, so it was still pixel-locked (no filter-based scaling).  The DVI output also carries a sound signal (not sure, but I think it's stereo too), so the separate audio out is optional.

- The 'stutter' I had seen on early videos (seemed to be a visible stall, perhaps of 2 frames, about once every 5 seconds or so), due to the difference in VSYNC frequencies between NTSC composite and HDMI (59.85 versus 60.00 Hz), has been significantly improved.  I was only able to notice it when I was actively searching for it.  There is even a 59.85Hz choice on the firmware setup screen (which I haven't tried, but may eliminate it altogether).

- SD cards (at least some types) are supported; not just MMC cards as the website suggests.  I've used a 16GB SDHC so far, and will try a 64GB SDXC next.

- CD's loaded much faster than I expected, and compatibility was good - although not perfect, there are frequent firmware updates to improve usability and compatibility.  Firmware updates seem to come out roughly monthly.


The output looks great, and is more playable than an emulator - no lag, and no shearing.

I haven't tried the following functions yet, but they should exist based on the Japanese website:
- snapshot (screenshot) grab
- USB connectivity to upload/download backup RAM and snapshots
- USB download of HuCard image 'rips'
- USB upload of limited HuCard games - I'm not clear on the details, but it seems that there is 512KB RAM, and 256KB of ROM in which to store images.  256KB is small, but good enough to hold a system card image; the RAM-based area may be usable for development... I'll look in to this.

Unfortunately, the website's English content is only about 30% of the Japanese, so there is still a big gap... which I will try to help translate, as I get further into using this product.

Dave

[JoeQuaker]

Very unlikely I'll ever have one of these, but interesting project nonetheless!

Just curious.. are you mainly planning on using it for actually playing stuff, or for possible development stuff?

[dshadoff]

Primarily for playing...  But what I'll be playing probably has a 'development' side to it - first, CDROM games that have been translated, likely followed by translations I'm working on.

[dshadoff]

I know that one thing on everybody's mind with a product like this, is its compatibility (are there any problems with specific games ?)

So as a follow-up, I've been working on a compatibility spreadsheet with the developer; he was using it for people to provide feedback to him on issues, but there wasn't a whole lot of positive feedback being provided for the public.

So, I've been playing games for several weeks to get to a point where the "compatibility rate" can actually be expressed.

It's all in a spreadsheet here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EIKgENXwRR7JhZSaE76bVxHXJoCKdr8AGf44t82TEu4/edit#gid=0

Basically, every CDROM game was played for at least 5 minutes (usually more than 10, and many to completion), to see whether there are any large issues (i.e. which would prevent the user from completing the game), or small issues (mostly annoyances like random noise or even a de-sync between voice and movement on screen).

Out of a total of 471 games distributed on CDROM media:
- 12 have issues large enough that they can't be completed by a player
- 13 have annoyances somewhere (most of these annoyances are in the video cut-scenes rather than the game itself)
- 4 have slight imperfections (i.e. issue somewhere between "I didn't notice it" and "infrequent annoyance")

...And this is with the October firmware; I know that there are at least 2 more fixes pending the next release.

Many of these are simply lip-synch issues (about half of the "minor" and all of the "slight imperfections"), and most of the others are common to more than one game, so I expect that these will be fixed in relatively big jumps.

Dave